This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2013, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
Orem police say they had caught a pair of suspected credit-card scammers from California.
On Halloween, Orem police heard that a man had bought $10,000 worth of guitars with fraudulent credit cards at Best in Music, according to a news release. While police followed up on that case, they heard a similar incident was in progress at Summerhays Music, 1006 S. State St. Officers arrived at Summerhays Music and arrested a 24-year-old California man. But the arrested man was not the one who bought the guitars in Best in Music, the release adds.
Police learned that the arrested man and another suspect had allegedly stolen people's identities and made fake credit cards, according to the release.
Investigators found that the other man, who is suspected of buying the guitars from Best in Music, was staying at the Best Western Hotel in Springville. Orem and Springville detectives worked together to get a search warrant for the hotel room and found the suspect, a 33-year-old Californian, according to the release. They also found "tens of thousands of dollars in guitars, generators, and welding boxes" inside, the release adds.
"All in all we were able to recover most of all the property bought in Utah, numerous fake IDs, numerous fake credit cards and credit-card numbers as well as the actual credit-card machine used to make the fake credit cards," police said.
Both men were booked into Utah County Jail. The 33-year-old was booked Halloween night, while the 24-year-old was booked Friday afternoon, according to the jail website.
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